


This Neverending Road

by AmunetMana



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 04:32:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3161342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmunetMana/pseuds/AmunetMana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hating is hard. Loving is harder. And sometimes, despite yourself and every promise you've ever made and every curse you've ever issued - sometimes you just wish you could give it all up.</p><p>-</p><p>Don't let the bastards get you down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Neverending Road

XII

 

It starts simple. Her hair cut at her knees, and plaited back. Nothing more than a convenience for when she’s baking, and to better suit the guise she’s living under on this codforsaken planet.

 

“‘Codforsaken’,” a rumble of laughter brushes against her fin – ( _where a human ear would be_ ) – and warm hands are on her shoulders. “Coming from the woman who hates jokes.”

 

The Condesce doesn’t kill the man who dares to touch her with hands running hot and mutant red beneath the skin.

 

She doesn’t let herself think that she wouldn’t kill him even if her Lord had commanded her not to.

 

~

 

XI

 

She understands being wanted. That is not new to her – far from it. She knew there were a thousand trolls from royalty to rags – from priceless violet to dirt and rust who would cut out their blood pushers and present them on bent knees if she deigned to breath in their direction.

 

She’d forgotten that desire could work the other way.

 

She’d certainly never known that hate and love could smear and stain together, that filthy alien hands could make her arch atop sheets too white, too dry.

 

That the aftermath of a pailing could be the kind of tender shit and closeness that makes you tremble more than being thrust into without warning and with the rage of the green sun and the hate of a gilded monster.

 

The human lies beside her, and strokes a long line along her horn, pushing her hair back from her face. She is more scared, she thinks, of the fact that he wants her, than she is of the fact that she could die at any moment, at any whim, at the hands of a monster’s tantrum.

 

She turns to face the window, escaping blue eyes –

 

She misses water.

 

~

 

X

 

Thunder rumbles around her as she’s striding back from a quick shopping trip for more flour, and she’s pulled her thin jacket tighter around her shoulders before she realises the sun is still bright, and the thunder is only laughter in her head.

 

“Best MOTHERFUCKING MIRACLE a brother could ask for!!”

 

The words are as loud as if he was there. As if he was still alive, and real, standing beside her. She works hard to be angry – even annoyed, in a pinch, but there is only a disquieted thrumming at the base of her skull.

 

“The fish-bitch-queen brought to her motherfucking knees BY THE ANGEL OF DOUBLE DEATH.”

 

She’d tell him to fuck off, but he’s already fucked far off, far beyond her reach, and she hates being told what to do, even by herself.

 

“You like playing the alien freak? YOU WISHING HARD TO BE STRUCK DOWN WITH MUTANT SWILL RUNNING THROUGH YOUR VEINS?”

 

She doesn’t run, but she speeds up her pace. People will look if she runs, and it’s already enough that the voices in her head whisper about her.

 

~

 

IX

 

The realisation strikes her when she is alone. Rolling out pastry paper-thin ( _human-skin-thin_ ) and she releases the rolling pin abruptly to step back from the board. There is an apron tied around her waist, pastel green. The shirt beneath is soft, a pale shade of her blood colour. _Her favourite_ , she’d thought absently that morning, _and it matched the pale gold skirt_. She’d barely thought about it.

 

She’d never though about the lack of nightmares, even after so many sweeps out of sopor.

 

The skirt swirls as she turns, and her plait hits the back of her legs. She is soft all around the edge, from escaping tendrils of hair, to rounded nail tips ( _to preserve that stupid, stupid skin_ ).

 

She looks at the pastry she’d made from scratch, ( _because no matter the quick cheats she sells in the shops, it’s always more satisfying to make your own_ ), and remembers when she used to plan genocide and subjugation instead.

 

She wonders if she cares anymore.

 

~

 

VIII

 

Her Lord told her that what the Infidel said had all been true. She’d have happily gone on not believing him even at his word, until he had forced the thoughts through her skull, splintering her brain until the wedges jammed in too deep to deny or forget. Time spills in between the cracks, and she cannot deny what the paradox of her own mind now remembers.

 

She tells the colonel about it, but only when he’s asleep and naked beside her. She’ll watch the rise and fall of him, and turn his wrist over slowly, looking at the traitorous veins that say _blue blood_ and not _red_ , and thinks of short black hair and a dress far bluer, the curve of horns rising from a grey skull.

 

She doubts he was really asleep, and wishes she hadn’t said a word when she wakes up with a spider the size of her fist, alive and fast, sat in his place instead of him.

 

She serves it to him for breakfast, and he only laughs.

 

She only feels guilty.

 

~

 

VII

 

 _Fair_.

 

 _My life isn’t fair_.

 

“What’s your basis for comparison?”

 

He’s writing in the infernal book again. As though he can feel her gaze even whilst looking down, he smiles at the paper.

 

“I’m an Empress and you are the scum beneath my feet. Too tiny for me to even know I’m stepping on you.”

 

She says it, sometimes, to remind herself it’s real. She sometimes wonders.

 

“I shouldn’t be here. I deserve better.”

 

And he always believes her.

 

At least –

 

“I know, my darling,” he looks up to her, and opens out his arm. She slides in beside him, and rests her head on his shoulder. Somehow she avoids gouging anything with her horns.

 

“I’m your Empress and I demand you put down the flipping book.”

 

He smiles wider, and turns to kiss her.

 

She bites his lip, because the pages still flutter in the breeze –

 

– and then spits out the blood because she’d let herself forget that she’s supposed to hate the taste.

 

~

 

VI

 

The meteor arrives, and she thinks maybe here is where she will spite the demon lord she serves. He has plans for these children, and she doesn’t know how yet, but she will find a way to ruin it. She will trump him even if it takes her to the edge of extinction.

 

Even if she has to change herself so much to do it, there is nothing of her left to remember the victory.

 

Then the Colonel dies, and she realises she’s already changed.

 

Her hands reach out to wrap around tender, paper-thin skin, ballet-pink nails digging into the soft flesh, and the baby starts to cry.

 

It has never stopped her before, infant cries, but she wraps the children into her arms sharply, and taken them into the house. She’s unfamiliar still with the differences between human genders (especially shrunken abominations, but not to small to kill) but she tries her hardest. She tries to remember what they eat (horrified to discover them all but toothless) and how to make them sleep (although maybe the noise was enough to deter predators), and all in all finds herself keeping the things alive.

 

It is, she thinks, what he would want.

 

She only cries herself when the children are deadened by sleep, and even her Lord cannot see.

 

She cleans the sheets of pink teardrops, and slowly begins to realise her species died long ago.

 

~

 

V

 

She’d though living with him would be the hardest thing she’d ever have to do in her gloriously long life.

 

Living without him turns out to be far harder, and she doesn’t even have the energy to hate the cliché of it all.

 

He finished the book, she discovers, and she sits herself down to read it cover to cover.

 

Most of the pranks, he’s played on her.

 

The rest, she’d played on him.

 

Her endless fish puns are all dutifully recorded, and include several she’d never even thought of before.

 

The children are scared to come close to her lest she strike them, ( _or worse, remind them that she is not human, and is not bound by their sentimentality_ ) and she leaves the book on the floor.

 

She refuses to smile when she hears them talking quietly, and knows they will read it again and again with the kind of reverence that will only ever grow.

 

~

 

IV

 

“You thought you were special because you pitied and hated in every way all at once. You think that was _hard_?

 

 _Anyone_ can do it.

 

 

Not that I can see why you’d _bother_. Seeing as they all go to fucking dust in the end anyway.”

 

She doesn’t have the energy to work fish puns and contempt into her words anymore.

 

~

 

III

 

Do people forget how to love, she wonders, or does love forget how to be felt?

 

Does love, she thinks, and thinks of blue girls and yellow boys and stupid filthy red-blooded filth, really want any of them?

 

Does love, she thinks as she cradles sleeping children she can only scream at and abuse in their waking hours, wish it was hurt instead?

 

~

 

II

 

She is not so stupid as to realise the irony in her current situation. The oppressor turned oppressed, the rebel to outdo all rebellions brought to her step.

 

She brushes dark hair and presses little clips into the curls, checking her own makeup in the mirror. The other clings to her arm, and she shakes it off before tears implore her to tug the small thing close again.

 

There are different kinds of rebellion, she tells herself, and almost believes it.

 

~

 

I

 

She suddenly understands why a demoness would smile with a trident deep in her gut, why a mother – even a false one – would die to save their offspring.

 

A child runs from her doors ( _because of her_ ), and she understands what it is to wish for death –

 

Then the last remaining dark head pokes into the room, and the child tumbles over itself to get to her, stopping to look at her with eyes flooded with uncertainty.

 

She clutches her fists, and sinks her fangs into her lower lip.

 

One day more.

 

~

 

0

**Author's Note:**

> Introspection into the Condesce's time on earth. Could be beta or alpha.


End file.
